Catch-A-Ride carshare is running a competition to find the most interesting photo of people
car sharing.
The prize is a 16-megapixel Nikon Coolpix compact camera, which also does HD movies.
Photos taken on any camera or phone are welcome!
The judge is Brighton photographer Heather Buckley, who is also a director of Silicon
Beach Training (providers of Photoshop training and SEO training in Brighton).
Competition Rules:
1) open to UK residents only
2) the photo must show people sharing a car journey, and not depict anything contravening the road code
3) by entering, you allow www.catcharide.co.uk to display the photo on their
website, if they wish. The photo will not be used for any other purpose.
To Enter:
e-mail your entry (jpeg, up to 1MB), to: contact@catcharide.co.uk
Closing Date: 15th March 2012
photo courtesy of Heather Buckley
Judging is currently underway for the 125 individuals and businesses nominated in the 2010 Sussex Eco-Awards. Here is what reporter Sarah Lewis-Hammond from the Brighton Argus newspaper has to say about Catch-A-Ride:
Like many of the greatest ideas, Catch-A-Ride is so fundamentally simple it makes you wonder why you never thought of it yourself. This cunning little website performs a brilliant function: putting people with empty cars together with car-less travellers, like a transport dating site for the ecologically sound. Catch-A-Ride allows drivers going in a certain direction to advertise for passengers. That way the only of the car saves on petrol costs, the traveller saves on transport costs, and we all save on the fact that the same amount of fuel has been used to transport more than one person.
Website manager Juliet Grieg got the idea from a German friend – lift-sharing is hugely popular in western Europe but never quite caught on in the UK, so her plan was to create a site where like-minded people could interact with each other and get used to using this vital fuel-saving method.
While the idea has been popular with those who know about it, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. Juliet explains, “The biggest challenge I’ve had to overcome is finding ways to advertise my website to a wider audience. Catch-A-Ride is completely not-for-profit, it doesn’t make any money at all, so obviously I had to find ways of advertising that wouldn’t cost me very much.”
Fortunately Catch-A-Ride caught the eye of several high profile websites like Ethical Junction and Act on CO2, as well as being featured in the Brighton Green Pages, and that exposure really helped get things off the ground. Juliet says, “Catch-A-Ride has developed from having a handful of members to hundreds in just a few years. In a few years from now I hope there’ll be thousands of people using it to share their car journeys, save resources and reduce their carbon footprints.”
Catch-A-Ride is a not-for-profit internet company run by Juliet Greig and Andrew Jarmin.
It has been running successfully since 2004.
Juliet says the idea for the website came from talking to people in Europe, where car sharing helps thousands of people with inter-city travel every day. She realised that there weren’t many options for UK carsharing on the internet, so decided to design a site for that purpose.
Car sharing is a great idea because people can share travel costs and save resources. As oil becomes an ever-more precious commodity, more people will share.
Catch-A-Ride has been featured in the Brighton Argus and the Latest 7 Magazine. The site is listed on top UK car-share information websites such as www.carplus.org.uk and the government website for Action on CO2. It has been featured in the Brighton Green Pages for the past two years, and this year in the national eco-directory Book of Green. It is a member of the Eco-Directory Ethical Junction.
In June 2010 Catch-A-Ride was a nominee in the Sussex Eco Awards.
Catch-A-Ride is free to join, so you can start sharing some of your journeys today!
Juliet Greig (Website Manager)
Brighton and Hove
